Helen,
I posted the following over at your blog. My links to sources were stripped out in process of posting here.
You ask the question: should women marry? Well, looking at the data, the answer is a resounding yes, for them and especially for their children.
One of the effects of the feminist assault on marriage that I find dramatically ironic is that it has resulted in women, children, and men being treated worse and facing more hardship and exposed to more social pathologies than ever before.
Another irony of the feminist assualt on marriage is that it has tended to disinvest men in family and, by extension, in society. This tends to breed men who have higher rates of crime, a higher risk of acquiring a social pathology of one kind or another, and lower overall academic achievement, making them less attractive as marriage partners for women who, even today, still marry up to a “success object”. And you have seen for yourself on your site the reluctance of many men to wed as a result of the feminist-legal combine.
The final characteristic of the decline in marriage is that it is self-perpetuating. Children raised in single-parent homes are apt to repeat that pattern. Also, many more women than men see a man’s involvement in the upbringing of children as optional.
The real question, from my perspective, is not that “should women marry?”. It is “why are women shunning marriage at least as much as the men are?”
That women greatly benefit financially from the breakup of a marriage is undisputed, but you generally need to be married first to do that. Perhaps governmental influence is part of the problem, as generous “child support”–in reality, hidden alimony–is extracted from a father and awarded to a mother regardless of her marital status, or whether she kicked him out of his home and out of his children’s lives involuntarily. In addition, government programs using monies paid by mostly male taxpayers have steadily been supplanting men’s direct financial contribution in the home for generations. Many of these programs are targeted only for women, and single mothers are by far the recipients of this largesse.
I think another factor that leads women to shun marriage is that women as a group still have a tendency to marry up, in either income or class. However, given that many women make more than men these days, and graduate from college at substantially higher rates, it is becoming more and more difficult for women to find men who fit the “superior to me” criteria.
